Discovering the Entrepreneur Within

This session is being offered in collaboration with MITACS Training (formerly Mitacs Step). Mitacs Training provides professional development training to advanced degree graduates, supplementing their education and research experience with the tools necessary to succeed in today’s workforce.

Discovering the Entrepreneur Within has participants analyze successful entrepreneurial ventures and identify what it took for those entrepreneurs to reach their goals. Using an interactive, team-based approach, this full-day workshop builds awareness of the current Canadian entrepreneurial landscape and resources available to those looking to start their own business. Using the tools and techniques used in the first part of the workshop, teams create a product or service concept that they will present to the group. May the best idea win!

Workshop Objective:

To expose participants to the benefits and trials of building a business while building awareness of the current Canadian entrepreneurial landscape and the resources available to entrepreneurs. The aim of the workshop is to broaden awareness of the entrepreneurial world to build confidence and expand a sense of possibility.

Learning Outcomes

Through participating and completing this workshop, participants will: 

• Have a broadened understanding of the elements that make a successful business and an unsuccessful business
• Gain a greater sense of what it take to be an entrepreneur
• Gain personal insight into taking the entrepreneurial route
• Understand different types of businesses
• Build awareness on different sources of financing
• Gain in-depth exposure to business planning
• Understand and have practiced creating and presenting the elements of a successful pitch

Key Topic Areas:

What makes a good entrepreneur?

• Self-assessment
• Entrepreneurial attributes
• Obstacles
• Risk tolerance
• Common pitfalls
• Changing face of entrepreneurialism

Entrepreneurial Landscape

• Current trends
• Definitions and resources

Know your company: structure your idea

• Entrepreneurial teams
• Market analysis
• Product vs. services
• Types of legal business entities
• Types of Funding
• Plan your idea
  • Financial/People/Legal, accounting, admin

Make a plan

• Plan your company
• Creating a business plan

Selling your idea

• Successful pitches to potential investors

Facilitator

Roger Patterson

Roger Patterson loves creating successful companies.  He has over 20 years experience in the software industry – 15 years of which were spent founding and running his own companies.  After starting off his career working for large corporate behemoths such as Nortel and Newbridge Networks, Roger found himself drawn to smaller, more innovative start-up companies, in search of that elusive feeling of being able to make a difference.

Roger has founded 4 companies:  2 in data-mining and business intelligence, 1 in mobile gaming, and is currently the CEO/Co-founder of Later.com - a visual marketing platform aiming for world domination! Along the way, he has been involved in every aspect of starting a company from scratch - from bootstrapping, to raising capital and seeing his company acquired; from finding that first elusive customer, to growing teams and scaling products to 100,000’s of users all over the planet.

Through all this, Roger has come to love and be humbled by the truly creative process of entrepreneurism, and looks forward to helping others turn their ideas into businesses.

Registration 

Registration in this workshop is required, and is now open. Those postdocs successfully registered will receive a confirmation email within one week of the workshop date.

** Please note that lunch will not be provided as part of this session. **